The Resurgence of Reggae : Pop music: Major labels sign more artists and watch sales rise. The Jamaican style enjoys renewed popularity with a new generation of performers and fans.

Marcia Griffiths didn’t expect the second coming of the Electric Boogie.

The veteran reggae singer, a member of the I-Threes vocal group that backed Bob Marley for years, released a record called “Electric Boogie” in 1983. But the single wasn’t successful outside the reggae scene and didn’t even become a fixture in her own concert repertoire.

After a Washington deejay began playing the record last summer, other stations picked up on the song, and Griffiths suddenly found herself with a runaway hit in the nation’s capital that spawned a club dance craze, the electric slide.

Island Records released a re-mixed version of the single last summer, and it has been hovering in recent weeks around the Top 50 of the Billboard pop charts.

The delayed success of “Electric Boogie” is part of a bigger story: Largely dismissed within record-industry circles as a Next-Big-Thing-That-Never-Was after the 1981 death of Bob Marley, the music’s greatest star, reggae is enjoying a renewed popularity.

It’s still an underground music, but there are undeniable signs that the Jamaican style is on the upswing: more major-label deals for reggae artists, steadily increasing sales for reggae-oriented labels, and the arrival of a new generation of performers and fans.

Unlike the ‘70s, when the reggae world was caught in the spell of Bob Marley, the music’s fortunes no longer seem tied to an individual. While the success of his son Ziggy’s 1988 album “Conscious Party” was a crucial catalyst, most observers agree that the new reggae audience broadly supports the music as a whole.

“There’s more hope now for reggae than I’ve seen in the years since Bob died,” said Roger Steffens, a former co-host of KCRW-FM’s influential “Reggae Beat” program. “There is fresh new blood, there are people without long memories and people willing to take it to a new stream. That’s healthy.”

The resurgence was brought home forcefully last February when the annual Bob Marley Day salute filled the 12,000-capacity Long Beach Arena. For longtime reggae observers who had been there at the beginning and seen the 1982 celebration in MacArthur Park featuring local bands and drawing perhaps 1,000 people, the Long Beach sellout was a shocker.

This year’s Bob Marley Day concert, scheduled today from 1:30 to 8 p.m., will again be at the Long Beach Arena, where another sellout is expected. The lineup includes the original Black Uhuru (Don Carlos, Garth Dennis and Duckie Simpson), the Mighty Diamonds, Shinehead and Tippa Irie.

This rise in reggae’s fortunes is especially dramatic in view of the pop industry’s pessimism about the commercial viability of the music after Marley’s 1981 cancer death.

“There was a definite lull after Bob’s death because it was almost like reggae had not only lost its founding father but its leader,” said Los Angeles deejay Ron Miller. “They were looking for somebody else to spearhead the movement, and no one came along that could fill those shoes. What took the leadership role was the music itself.”

The shock waves from Marley’s death even affected some of reggae’s strongest champions within the record industry. It was one of the factors that caused Chris Blackwell, whose Island Records label initially brought Marley and reggae to the world, to back away from the music during the early ‘80s. But now Blackwell sees interest in the music rising again.

“I think it’s been brought about by Ziggy, who has become a real point of focus and leader,” Blackwell said, by phone from Jamaica. “That was what reggae was lacking for some time. He brought some attention to himself and through that to the music and other artists.”

The figures may not be dramatic by rap or even underground rock standards, but the revitalized spirit in reggae is being reflected in record stores and concert sales.

* Producer Tony Johnson started the Reggae Sunsplash festival in 1978 to provide a live showcase for reggae in Jamaica. Johnson took Sunsplash to London in 1984, and two years later started the package tours in America that are bringing the music into new markets. This year’s Sunsplash tour should hit Southern California in May.

* Rick Hocutt, vice president of California Record Distributors in Glendale, said that West Coast sales on Heartbeat and Mango, the small labels that have released the bulk of reggae records here during the ‘80s, have doubled in the last two years. Mango, for example, jumped from 96,000 in 1988 to 169,000 in 1989.

* Real Authentic Sounds (RAS) Records, the Washington-based label that provides American distribution for 30 to 40 Jamaican labels, increased its sales by 50% last year from 1.2 million to 1.8 million. RAS founder Gary Himelfarb expects to crack the 2-million unit barrier this year, but he doesn’t view the increased sales as a sign of mainstream acceptance.

“To me, reggae and mainstream are oxymorons because reggae is an underground type music,” he said. “It’s for people who have deep feelings for humanity, and a lot of people don’t want to be burdened with what’s wrong with this world and how to make it better.”

There are other signs of reggae’s vitality: the wide array of talent, a variety of reggae styles and reggae’s penetration of the American pop mainstream, even beyond its influence on hits like Bobby McFerrin’s “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.”

But the most dramatic new development is that reggae, which has primarily attracted a white, rock-oriented crowd, may finally be making inroads with the African-American audience that has long resisted it. Ziggy Marley’s “Tumbling Down” reached No. 1 on the black singles chart, a first for a reggae artist here, and director Spike Lee included Steel Pulse’s “Can’t Stand It” in his acclaimed “Do the Right Thing” film.

More intriguingly, a fusion of reggae and hip-hop has surfaced in the last six months. Shinehead’s canny blend of the two styles on his 1988 album “Unity” was the first portent, and now Sly & Robbie’s “Silent Assassin” collaboration with rap producer KRS-One has accelerated the momentum.

“Aspects of the reggae rhythm are a tremendous dynamic in the hip-hop field, and that’s starting to merge with rap culture,” said Blackwell of Island Records. “Early Jamaican deejay records were somewhat of a precursor of rap music, so there’s a lot in common in those two attitudes to music.”

The situation for live reggae in Los Angeles is volatile. The Rebel Rockers are familiar with the ups and downs common to American reggae bands--record label interest that faded away after Marley’s death and offers from producers who were willing to work with them . . . if they changed their sound.

The Laguna Beach-based quintet went directly to the source, recording and releasing a few singles on Jamaican labels and even appearing twice at the Reggae Sunsplash event there.

New-breed Los Angeles artists are making headway by releasing their own records and plugging into reggae’s international tour circuit. Vocalist Swelele went to Japan for three months last year and is starting to attract major-label attention after several singles for local labels.

Boom Shaka’s “Creation” album was picked up by Celluloid Records last year after the group initially released it on its own label. They toured Europe and introduced live reggae to Tunisia at a government-supported cultural festival there.

“Every time I listen to Bob Marley, I hear Curtis Mayfield and Marvin Gaye, so he was influenced by the things that were around him at that time,” said Trevy, lead singer for Boom Shaka.

“To even think about looking for a new Marley is madness. That’s like looking for another Jimi Hendrix or John Coltrane--it can’t be. Those people just come like a falling star and you can’t duplicate a situation like that.”